Research On Wind Energy Development For Sustainable Energy Security In Africa

Wind energy is the energy source that is rapidly making inroads in Africa.Energy security has become a topical issue due to the importance of energy to the development of any country.No country can develop meaningfully without access to adequate,sustainable,cost competitive,and environmentally benign energy.The first objective of this study is to characterize and measure the energy security situation and level of the African continent.The results indicate that the study countries are on a trajectory of energy insecurity based on PCA method due to the high loadings of factors that explain the concept after reducing the data through a multi-dimensional approach.The findings show conventional energy factors load and rotate significantly.This reinforces the energy insecurity nature of the countries.The Principal Component Regression(PCR)measures energy security in African countries using independent variables of energy poverty,energy equity,particulate Matter concentration,the quality of port infrastructure,renewable energy output,and then take crude prices as a dependent variable.The empirical results show that energy infrastructure greatly determine sustainable energy security.The findings further demonstrate richer countries can invest in resilient energy infrastructure,and the poorer countries are less able to invest in energy infrastructure due to their low-level development.Depicting the unsustainable energy security levels of the study economies;and the minimal generation of electricity from renewable sources.The findings in this study also support the necessity to have an African energy Security system(AES).This will provide a comprehensive understanding of energy insecurity in the African context and a transformative framework to change a new paradigm of sustainable energy security.The second objective aims to study the determinants of wind energy in Africa to ensure energy security using data from the WBG indicators and the International renewable energy agency(IRENA).The study uses the Panel fixed effects method of African countries with wind electricity generation from national grids.The results show that energy imports,electricity consumption,electrification rate,and carbon dioxide emissions are the main determinants for scaling upwind and ensuring long-term energy security in Africa.The learning curve theory analysis shows that wind costs have decreased over decades in Africa and the world.The global LCOE cost per k Wh of offshore wind energy has fallen by 62.7% from 2000 to 2019.The green premium analysis revealed that coal and the rest of the fossil fuels have the highest green premium,meaning the study countries spend more on coal and other fuels.The study concludes that a long-term implementation of policies to scale up wind energy deployment will increase access to electricity to improve sustainable energy security and inclusive development.This final objective estimates how the integration of wind energy can ensure energy security in the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS).This study analyzes the economic rationale for integrating wind energy to bring about energy security and universalization and therefore achieve the SDG seven by 2030.This was done by applying a panel Vector Autoregression(PVAR)approach and a Levelized cost analysis(LCOE)to determine the driving factors and the economic aspects of deploying wind energy.The analysis shows that Onshore wind energy integration has the next most affordable generation cost of nearly 3 cents per kilowatts,correspondingly,after large-scale solar,within the study Subregion.The sensitivity analysis indicates that the full hours load is the most important in determining where to site a farm and the yield per year.Hence,the economic integration of Wind energy within the ECOWS Subregion must be integrated with national poverty alleviation and development policies to achieve the intended outcomes of reliably and accessible energy services.This study will inform the political course regarding the expansion of wind energy in order to achieve sustainable energy security in Africa.And complement empirically,theoretically and methodically at the same time the literature on sustainable energy security on the African continent,touted as the energy deficit continent.